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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25905046">Eels</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrarian/pseuds/Astrarian'>Astrarian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Writer's Month, August 2020 [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aretuza (The Witcher), Gen, Post-Episode: s01e02 Four Marks, Writer's Month 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:54:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>547</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25905046</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrarian/pseuds/Astrarian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, her friend was turned into an eel. Yennefer then pushed that friend into a pool of water. Now she looks into the water and thinks about unanswered questions.</p><p>(Writer's month 2020 - Day 14: metamorphosis)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Writer's Month, August 2020 [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861909</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Writer's Month 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Eels</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Yennefer stares into the opaque water in the underground pool beneath Aretuza. Every so often an elongated shadow, an eel swimming slowly beneath the surface of the water, will rise from the clouded depths. Yennefer watches one do so, biting her lips, hoping against all evidence that the shadow will do something. But after some indeterminate amount of time, the shadow soundlessly sinks down into the water again, out of sight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer sags and shifts absent-mindedly. Her knees begin to sting due to the change in position. She’s been here long enough that her back is starting to ache, and when she rubs her knee she feels that the sharp edges of the rocky floor have left sore indents in her skin, hot to the touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yet she keeps watching. It’s not because the soft light and the gentle lapping of water could be considered soothing. It’s not even because the air is heavy and humid with residual chaos, which makes her a little lethargic in the same way a hot summer day under the stable roof would have. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There isn’t even an inkling of a familiar thread in all of the chaos.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of that time spent sharing her thoughts with Anica, forming a hesitant friendship, feels wasted now. Anica wasn’t meant to ascend. Perhaps a part of Yennefer is pleased, because the secrets she’d shared with the other girl are safe underwater now. They can’t be used against her. And because she, Yennefer, has been deemed powerful enough to ascend eventually, while the other </span>
  <em>
    <span>weaker</span>
  </em>
  <span> girls are just eels now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders what Anica’s thinking now. Whether she can think at all. Whether she’s just a simple animal, or just a witless vessel of nature’s chaos, swimming up and down through the water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If there’s nothing left of Anica, or the other girls, that would likely explain the complete lack of identifying features in the chaos.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer wonders what it must be like to have one’s control taken away, to be changed into another form on the whim of someone more powerful. Without choice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t want that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s been watching for long enough to feel confident the eels won’t do anything other than occasionally rise to the surface. She hasn’t seen an eel eat or fight with another or make any sudden movements with its body. They don’t respond when she pushes tiny pebbles into the water. They only move slowly, eerily slow, drifting up, then down. She wonders why they do it, when there’s nothing up here for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s not even sure how many eels there are in the water anymore. At least three, she’d presumed when she first snuck back down here. But for the most part the waters are near-still and there’s no sign of life within them at all. When an eel does rise up, there’s just the one. She hasn’t seen more than one at a time and there’s nothing to distinguish it from anything else. There might just be one eel. There could be hundreds. The true depths of the pool are obscured. Hundreds of mindless creatures, drifting, empty and powerless. Barely living.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In that state, what does it matter if there’s one or one hundred?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What does it matter if one used to be Yennefer’s friend?</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A day late, a buck short, but here is day 14.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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